National parks & wilderness

There's a lot of scenery crammed into one stretch of Lake Superior around Munising.

Along Michigan's Pictured Rocks, there's no such thing as a bad view.

White sandstone cliffs line nearly 40 miles of national lakeshore, the nation's first when it was created in 1966. Named for the colorful swishes and whorls painted by mineral-laden water oozing through cracks, Pictured Rocks draws tourists from around the world.

This part of Michigan is inconveniently distant for tourists from big cities; Detroit is closer to Charleston, W.V., than Munising.

The wilderness around this Minnesota town exerts a magnetic pull on city folk.

In Ely, one picture is worth a thousand tourists.

Who could ignore the call of its photogenic expanses of sky-blue water and rocky islands amid spruce forest? Who isn't drawn to a shimmering image of the northern lights, or of a moose and calf browsing in a patch of wild calla lilies?

The wild 21-island archipelago around Wisconsin's Bayfield Peninsula is the preserve of paddlers.

The sky was clear, the wind was still and Lake Superior was as placid as a lily pond.

It was a miracle that wouldn't last.

That's why it was torture for the dozen of us to sit through a long kayak safety course on the sandy beach of Bayfield, Wis., forming a ''human knot'' to foster cooperation in case of disaster and listening to trip leader Hovas Schall's horror stories about the big, mercurial lake.

For outdoorsy folks, this Minnesota wilderness is a year-round playground.

In the 1920s, when the first resorts appeared along this remote, 57-mile highway that dead-ends near the Canadian border, guests had to have a certain sense of adventure.

The Gunflint Trail first was blazed by the Ojibwe, then used by fur traders, trappers and loggers. It was still a zigzagging roller-coaster through the woods when vacationers began to come.

The first visitors in spring often had to patch the single phone line, which moose tended to snag and drag. Gasoline lanterns in their cabins often became plugged, and bears sometimes made appearances near cabins.

On eight great day hikes, get a taste of this 65-mile trail through Minnesota's canoe country.

This 65-mile trail roughly parallels the Ontario border, mostly through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The volunteers who maintain it can't use mechanized tools there, and signs aren't allowed.

For canoeists, this vast wilderness is the promised land.

Along Minnesota's northern border with Canada, more than 200,000 people a year find an increasingly rare commodity  absolute wilderness.

The million-acre Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is barely changed since voyageurs used its chain of lakes and rivers to push deep into the continent's interior.

Today, the foot trails over which they carried canoes and 180-pound packs are used by vacationers, who wind their way from lake to lake in search of the perfect combination of woods, water and solitude.

Sign up to work in a lighthouse, study wolves or join the fur trade.

Around Lake Superior, you have to act fast to reserve a vacation mowing lawns or combing the ground for bones.

It may not sound glamorous, but the lawns are at lighthouses, and the moose bones are in the backcountry of Isle Royale National Park, where volunteers may be tutored by famous Wolf-Moose Project researchers Rolf Peterson and John Vucetich.

You may not get to take a lot of hot showers, but oh, the stories youll tell.